I am not that woman in a burqa

We all know that women in Arab culture — as in many other cultures — are the weaker sex, the other sex, unequal; they do not inherit, or pass on their name, they are the bearers of children, and of dreadful shame. When I was born, I was greeted with sobs and tears of disappointment and dismay: everybody was waiting for a boy, and I was the fifth girl in a row, the fifth disappointment, what my mother considered her fifth defeat. Compared to my uncle’s wife, who triumphantly produced 10 precious boys, my mother was a loser, an unblessed wife. Though she was more beautiful, intelligent and dignified than all the other women in the family, everybody saw her as the least productive, the one without valuable fruit.

From childhood I heard them say that girls — of the family, the neighbourhood, and world — were powerless, helpless, doomed by nature, and permanently weak. I inherited those prejudices. And yet a few months ago, my younger sister told me that I was the only member of the Khalifeh family (a tribe-sized family) whose name was in the Palestine Encyclopaedia: “not my father, not my brother, not my uncle with his ten miraculous boys, not any male in the family... there was only you.”

I went through different phases: I was transformed by trends, and was a transmitter of change. Even in the most conservative families, women now go to school; they become teachers, doctors, engineers, pharmacists, writers, journalists, musicians and artists. Many are now considered indispensable, stronger than men, more creative, and more important.

So when I see our image in western media — veiled harem women, wrapped in chadors, behind leather masks — I am amazed: “Why do they see us fixed in one reality, in one static phase? Do they think we were created differently than the rest of the female sex, unable to change?!”

‘Change and justice’

I had a teacher who used the word “change” in different tones and meanings, as when he spoke about social justice, fair (...)